Theresa Ortega is a blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, has met Joe Lewis, Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwartzanegger, is the first non-fire or –police officer in the United States to be certified to teach conversation Spanish to law enforcement and has been on stations like Mix FM to analyze handwriting.
Ortega, an administrative assistant in recreational sports, has been working at ISU for years. As an administrative assistant, she said she does everything from "billing to payroll to advertising."
"I kind of do a little bit of everything, which is fun," she said.
But "a little bit of everything" might be an understatement.
Ortega was recently certified to teach Tactical Spanish for Law Enforcement by Alejandra Gomez, who has taught Spanish to companies such as Apple since 1988, according to the Public Safety Language Training Web site.
Ortega said she went through about eight hours of coaching with Gomez before she received certification.
"She wanted to see what my rapport was going to be with people," Ortega said. "And what was so interesting about it was her teaching methodology is just so much like mine."
Ortega said she uses a lot of props and does some "kind of crazy" things in the classroom, like bringing in practice weapons from her martial arts store, Kamikaze Karate, or making the officers stand up and do "goofy things."
The point, she said, is for offers to get a "mind-body connection with what they're learning."
With about a month left in the course, Ortega is gearing up to teach some "street lingo."
"We're going to do a lot of cussing, and slang, and […] drug terms, and […] street talk, so we're gonna do a lot of slang," she said.
Martial arts equipment might not be the first thing most people think of when Spanish classes come up, but, given Ortega's background, it is unsurprising.
Ortega said she spent over two years working as a translator in the courts. She also lived in Venezuela as a child and grew up in a bi-lingual household.
Ortega opened Kamikaze Karate almost 14 years ago after realizing that her own Tae Kwon Do instructor charged "three times, four times […] what the retailer suggests" for equipment.
Kamikaze Karate does not, she said, cater to a specific kind of martial arts. Instead, they carry a wide variety of items, from throwing knives to swords, geared toward a number of different martial arts styles.
"I have everything from tai chi to Isshin-Ryu karate, Tae Kwon Do, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Hapkido, Shidokan," she said. "Pretty much any style."
"In Indiana, the only thing I'm not allowed to sell is throwing stars," Ortega said. "They are illegal."
She also said the store does not endorse a specific instructor. "What I want you to do is go out there and meet these people and see what you think because largely I've found most of the instructors in the area are pretty good," she said. "What it comes down to a lot of the times tends to be a personality difference."
Although Ortega admits that there are many differences between fighting styles—from the emphasis on history and philosophy to the gear they use—there is one thing that doesn't change as she travels the country, promoting her store at exhibits and seminars: surprise that she isn't with a school.
"I'm kind of an anomaly in the business" she said. "I've exhibited from Florida to Las Vegas to Chicago, you name it, and […] people invariably say to me, ‘Well, what do you teach in your school? What style do you teach?' and I say ‘I'm not a school; I'm a stand-alone martial arts retailer.'"
"They look at me like I'm nuts," she said.
Running a store dedicated to a niche of the sports world is not the only one of Ortega's seemingly unusual hobbies.
"I teach handwriting analysis, both here and at Ivy Tech," she said.
"Sometimes people lump us with card readers or palm readers," she said. "All I look at are stroke patterns, shapes, sizes […] It's really all scientific."
Ortega said she first became interested in handwriting analysis when her grandmother had an analysis done.
"A few years later, I found a book," she said. "And this book dealt with handwriting analysis relating to aggressive behaviors for dating situations."
She said she read the book and later contacted an analyzer she heard on the Bob and Tom Show.
"I started out with a small deck of cards that he designed and basically it takes each trait separately and shows you what an A means if it's written as such," she said.
She said she began studying for certification in 2003, and in 2007 she went to Dallas to take "an oral and a written exam."
She said she has traveled to various conferences to analyze handwriting. She has also worked with campus groups and local businesses.
She said studying handwriting has helped her a lot.
"One of the things we talk about a lot in handwriting is seeing a person's self-esteem," she said. "And what I find is probably 80-90 percent of women show low self-esteem in our handwriting."
She said she has learned to focus on self-esteem and saying "This is me, faults and all; we all have them."
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